Monday, February 13, 2012

Scrapbooking HEAVEN

I am sooooooooo lucky to have always had my own scrapbooking room! My hubby has generously sacrificed so that I could always enjoy a little bit of heaven in our house...I think it's mostly because he knows that my sanity is on the line ;) However, I've always "had" to share my art space with the guest room...so it's always "had" to be tidied whenever we have guests...which is a pain. These pictures are actually the FIRST and likely the ONLY time this room will ever be tidy! It's lovely...but usually it's very messy - after all, it's where I do my wild creating!!!

The before picture really isn't representative of all the work we did. This room wasn't an awesome pink ("Peony" by Benjamin Moore) - it was a true primary purple colour. It also didn't have all this furniture in it (obviously) - these Ikea Expedit shelves were all upstairs in what's becoming our front sitting room; the previous owner had them all stacked to create a homeschooling area for her kids. We purchased these pieces with the house hoping to use them just for this little room :)

So...on to the fun stuff (ps sorry for the random centering...I can't seem to get blogspot to cooperate and center everything properly)!

This room is a small bedroom in our basement. Fortunately, however, it's ground level and FULL of light, which I totally need! I decided on the bright colour scheme of pink and teal, inspired by something I saw on pinterest. SUPER girly, and SUPER wild, but I really love it!

I made these tissue pom poms and strung them on ribbon to create huge fun garlands all over the ceiling. If you want to make pom poms yourself for a room or for a party, just check out http://www.marthastewart.com/how-to/tissue-paper-pom-poms-how-to - super easy! It makes the ceiling feel a bit low, but I love it anyway! I love how it's like a PARTY in my art room every day :)

This dresser and painting are the first thing you see when you walk into my art room. I was inspired by a Starbucks mug to paint the heart as it is...and then I wrote quotes from a WONDERFUL book by Brene Brown called The Art of Imperfection (check her great blog out here: http://www.ordinarycourage.com/) I wanted to be reminded of the WholeHe{art}ed living I had learned about from her...she also has a great Ted Talk here: http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html - check her our for major inspiration (thank you Krystal and also Tara-Lynn for sharing Brene with me)!

These are (most of) my stamp sets hiding behind the door...they're all organized in DVD sized cases from Stampin Up! I unmounted all my wooden stamps to be versatile enough to use on a clear block and store flat. I organize them by topic...I did a whole blog post on this a while ago here: http://scrap-therapy.blogspot.com/2010/02/organizing-is-fun.html I can't believe how many more stamps I've accumulated - LOVE STAMPS!!!!!! Love that one little DVD holder can house HUNDREDS of them!!!! Ever need to borrow a stamp??? Just ask!

I used three expedit shelves that came with our house to create this big storage wall to your left when you walk in. It was so hard to find containers for all my stuff that would fit on these shelves! Your typical 14"X14" container that I had a million of are too big for the square cubbies...so I found these at walmart and put them to use. I again went crazy with making labels on my cricut and am pretty happy with the results - organized, put away, but reachable and available.

I found these big poster frames on clearance at Ikea for only $8 and they worked perfectly for my Compendium wrapping papers...I love those papers so much that I want to read them and see them and frame them as art! I love how cheap it was for me to have BIG BEAUTIFUL inspiration on this wall :)

A couple pics of my girls :) And, of course, a compendium book!

Love seeing paper all colour coordinated and in a row...yummy!!!

A bit of my "E" collection on top of the plate rack used as paper storage. I've been using this plate rack for a long time - it's originally from Ikea, but discontinued. It's bowing pretty bad, but holds the paper to the wall and frees up floor space.

I used wine racks and dollar store vases as pen storage...it's so important to always make sure your felt pens are HORIZONTAL...that way the ink stores evenly :) I love wine racks - they're so pretty (but I don't drink wine...lol!)

These drawer-boxes used to be in our office space, and I just painted them teal and added pink labels...these store my quick-needs like scissors, adhesives and hole punches.

I used garden containers that I found on clearance last fall at Homesense (got two of them in two different sizes for only $13!!!) to house all my punches. I was going to try to hide them away in a drawer or something, but they're so heavy that this worked better. My other idea was to put them on the wall, but I ran out of wall space, because I covered it in art instead ;)

This is the closet! We took off the doors, took down the clothes shelving, and had Tim our finisher friend custom build durable shelves to hold my computer, oversized printer, cricut, sillouette, and travel cases...I LOVE THIS AREA! I also found a nifty little lamp at ikea (see it? top right shelf) that is flexible so I can shine light on whatever I need inside the closet...woop woop! Opinion: do you think I should add curtains around the closet??? Lemme know what you think :)

About Me

"It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness." I have so much - truly, I do - a wonderful husband, a beautiful baby girl, an adorable puppy, a relationship with a God who loves me. But, really...if I'm not THANKFUL, if I don't stop and CHERISH these things...how happy am I? Scrapbooking is so therapeutic for me for that reason: it makes me mindful of what I am blessed with!